for all the citizens and the title of the law of the Twelve Tables relative
to successions was for no other object than to establish this ancient
equality of the division of lands.[19] (2) Niebuhr,[20] on the contrary,
claimed that territorial property was primitively the attribute of the
patriciate and everyone who was not a member of this noble race was
incapable of possessing any part of the territory. From this theory the
author deduced numerous consequences which are important both to law and
history. Neither of these systems is free from errors. Montesquieu seems to
have made no difference between patrician and plebeian in using the term
_citizen_, while it is no longer disputed that the plebeian was not a
burgess and consequently had no civic rights save those granted to him by
the ruling class. His idea of goods must have, at least, become chimerical
at a very early date, as this equality was so little suspected by the
ancients that Plutarch,[21] after having spoken of the efforts of Lycurgus
to overturn the inequality of wealth among the Spartans, accuses Numa of
having neglected a necessity so important. It is moreover difficult to
see how Montesquieu could think that testamentary disposition tended to
maintain equality when the privilege was accorded to every citizen of
disposing of his entire patrimony by will even to the prejudice of his
children.[22] Again, the law of debts was hardly favorable[23] to equality.

Niebuhr clearly[24] denied the existence of the plebs until Ancus
incorporated the Latins and bestowed upon them peculiar privileges thus
forming a new and third class distinct from both patricians and clients.
Had Niebuhr succeeded in establishing this view, the right to landed
property would appear to be wholly vested in the patricians, for a client,
from the very nature of his position, could hold nothing independent of
his master. But this theory has fallen to the ground and no writer of the
present day pretends to uphold it. The plebeians existed from the very
first and some of them held land in full private ownership very little